Thanks Wagging! - Newsletter Edition 79

wagwritersguild

Nov 28, 2024

In this week’s edition:

Editorial: Thanksgiving vibes, hot news & awards, applause for our creators, newsletter festive break.
Top Story - Newsgiving Awards Ceremony!: This week’s hot news plus an award ceremony.
Featured Update - Applause for Our Creators!: The recent standout content produced by WagMedia creators.
Wag Roundup: News from our Finders Program between November 19th and November 25th.
Extras: Credits and anything else.

The full newsletter can be enjoyed via this link.

Editorial

What is up, my friends!

It’s the time of year for giving thanks and in cryptoland, 2024, there’s probably a tale or two to be told around the dinner table. For many, there is the opportunity to do some shopping to grab a bargain before the Christmas festivities kick in.

Kicking into the Polkadot ecosystem is the breaking news of an official FIFA game coming to Mythical Games. Perhaps you might have needed to front-run Black Friday and Cyber Monday because the ecosystem is enjoying a nice little breakout.

Speaking of taking a break, this week’s newsletter will be the last before we pause until the new year. Don’t worry, those still looking for news can rest assured that we’ll keep the news roundups flowing, as long as our ecosystem builders haven’t shut down for the rest of the year. We might also have a story or two in the works during the break.

This brings us on to the top story of the week, which is spamming with goodness and rivaled with excitement. Given that we’d be pausing our newsletter for the rest of the year, we thought we’d top off the top story with a bit of a Newsgiving Awards Ceremony to reflect on the year.

Many of those mentioned at the awards ceremony would have been covered by the content created by WagMedia creators throughout the year. In this week’s featured story, we will be taking a look at which creators have stepped up since our recent return.

As many of us embark on the festive activities and winter break, take the opportunity to catch up on some of our stories which you can find on X and on Grillapp. If you’re feeling inspired to find news or create content, head on over to our Discord.

Dodow, Chief Editor

Top Story of the Week - Newsgiving Awards Ceremony!

Written by yay.oi

While Thanksgiving tradition calls for watching NFL, Polkadot’s closest tie is with the Kansas City Chiefs, and they’re not playing. In the spirit of cross-chain communication, let’s communicate across borders and give thanks to the world’s game.

This week, Mythical, in collaboration with FIFA, announced the launch of FIFA Rivals, targeting a summer 2025 release. To put some perspective on the potential magnitude of this deal, FIFA Mobile, the last FIFA-licensed mobile game, accumulated in the region of 500M players. Mythical CEO John Linden is expecting at least 100M players.

While Mythical is racking up player numbers, an interview with Gavin Wood, Polkadot founder and chief architect, is accumulating some massive viewer numbers. Clocking in at 3 hours, the interview with Kevin Follonier covers an array of topics, including Gav’s experiences developing Ethereum, Polkadot, and JAM, but also offers a rare glimpse into his life philosophy, upbringing, and personal life.

Meanwhile, in his public life, Gav’s tweets have been gaining a bit of traction. That said, was it this reply that ended up putting a spammer in the works? The treasury-funded Polkadot Spammening, a stress test to showcase the network’s full potential, was due to commence on November 25th at 14:00 UTC. After a relatively incident-free test-run on Kusama, the community was getting pumped.

With less than 24 hours before deployment, the stress test was postponed without explanation. At this point we can only speculate on why. Maybe they liked Gav’s idea and wanted to blow the competition away by boosting the core count, or maybe they were kindly asked not to perform a stress test on the same day that Hydration deploys a major new feature.

Say hello to the Hydration money market! Promising to usher in the DeFi Renaissance, it opens up new opportunities for credit lines against unconventional assets, and investment leveraging.

However, by taking control of block ordering, Hydration has closed the opportunity for exploitative MEV bot strategies that front-run or sandwich attack forced liquidations. It’s one of the advantages of having your own custom chain, secured by Polkadot.

So, that’s a wrap for this week’s Polkadot powered epic developments. Now, let’s take a moment to thank and commend our top achievers for the year.

Before we start, allow us to say that while we strive to acknowledge all of your efforts, we sincerely apologize to any deserving projects, builders, or ecosystem agents that we may have overlooked.....…….

Go check out the WagMedia Polkadot awards.

Featured Update - Applause for Our Creators!

Written by Dodow

The Wag mantra is about helping tell Polkadot’s story, one creator at a time. In line with this vision, WagMedia resumed operations in October after securing treasury funding for another 12 months. Since our return, the initial approach has focused on encouraging creators to tap into their own creative ideas while prioritizing substance, authenticity, and smart engagement.

While this means the bounty hub, which has issued over 50 bounties, will be paused for a period, it also brings us back to our roots of free content creation. That said, there is no guarantee of rewards for content submissions. Creators who have been paying attention to the Polkadot and broader Web3 landscape will likely understand the trending subjects, which present the best opportunities for recognition and rewards.

Still struggling with what to create? Have a look at the content ideas dump channel on our Discord. Of course, there’s always the opportunity to strengthen your research and writing foundations through our Finders Program, where you might get the chance to write stories like the one you’re currently reading. Or, if you’re new, we also have some Wagtastic Tips and Tricks for you.

As we head into the festive period of breaks and celebration, it’s a good opportunity to reflect on which creators and their contributions have stood out. Please note that the rewards mentioned are in tokens, so it’s important to recognise when they were rewarded, due to market fluctuations……...

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